Tag : customer-centricity

The End Is Not Nigh (now let’s get serious…)

Carlton Hoyt 1:25 pm , December 15, 2015

People love to decry the end of marketing. It’s a good attention-getter. While those who shout about the coming of the end of marketing from their soapboxes are usually guilty of lacking realism or using poor logic, they do make us think about the future and that can be a learning experience. Let’s take an example…

Knowledge @ Wharton recently published an interesting, albeit narrow-sighted and overly apocalyptic article about the end of marketing and what, according to the author, will be the very narrow opportunities to engage audiences that will remain in the future. The author does a very good job of identifying trends but a very bad job of predicting what the future will likely look like, but both the good and the bad provide important lessons and highlight valuable opportunities.

First, the trends. No reason to discuss these much because most should be more or less obvious to anyone reading this.

People would rather listen to other people than brands.
People are going to greater lengths to avoid the onslaught of advertisement.
Marketing technology “cannot truly understand the complexities of consumer intent” and therefore hitting the trifecta of the right message on the right channel at the right time is exceedingly difficult. (This I would actually say is up for debate. It’s a gray area. A discussion for another time, perhaps…)
Marketers are overwhelming digital channels, further driving users to avoid marketing out of simple necessity. See point #2.

And here are the author’s four corresponding points of how he envisions the future:

“As consumers bypass media with greater ease, the social feed is the wormhole to the entire online experience.”
“As consumers outcompete marketers for each other’s attention, every piece of media contained in the feed is not only shareable, but shoppable.” – basically, he’s arguing that social channels become capable of performing transactions.
“As the individual controls the marketing experience, communication shifts from public to semi-private.” In other words, people move from things like Facebook to things like Snapchat, where there are fewer ads and more privacy.
Only two types of marketing will remain: discounts / sales and transparent sponsored content.

These predictions amount to a wild fantasy.

The most obvious flaw in the author’s reasoning is that somehow a completely shoppable social media ecosystem would evade the rules that everyone else has to play by – namely that when marketing becomes overwhelming, the audience will block it out or leave. This also ignores the plain fact that the large majority of the things that people buy are not found organically via social media. There is no shortage of people who shop. Decisions may be influenced in the social sphere, and perhaps some impulse decisions both begin and end there, but those are the exception; the overwhelming majority of purchasing decisions do not occur entirely within the social sphere and that would not change if social channels were empowered with transactability.

The real world contains a great deal of equilibrium. The ability to target people and their ability to tune it out is a balancing act. It is a cat and mouse game. Technology works both ways, and as new channels and technologies are born there become more ways to reach customers. However, as channels are flooded, the impact of each individual effort diminishes. Marketing self-regulates by decreasing its own ROI as utilization of any particular channel increases.

So What Will the Future of Marketing Look Like?

There are definitely many channels that will continue their trend towards ineffectiveness. It’s increasingly likely that audiences, fed up with maddening digital display advertising techniques, continue to adopt ad blocking technology and erode the potential of that channel. Email, while still rated as a high-ROI channel, is looking like it may have a perilous future as email service providers become better at filtering out promotions. Social media will certainly take on a larger share of permission-based marketing, but it will remain a risky business to rely too much on “rented” audiences. Increasing utilization of content marketing will continue to add noise and, in turn, increase its own cost by requiring better and better content to obtain the inherently limited resource it seeks to obtain: the audience’s attention. Increased use of social media may, if adoption increases as we project, fall victim to a similar effect, limiting brands’ ability to market effectively using social channels.

Not all developments will be bad. A decline in interruption tactics will lead to a fundamental shift in how marketing is viewed from a tool to generate demand to a mechanism to deliver value to audiences and a source of strategic advantage. Customer-centric resources and other owned platforms will proliferate as companies seek new ways to deliver value to customers while increasing the affinity level between customer and brand. These companies with strong brand affinities will create sustainable advantage for themselves as they shortcut and compress the customer decision journeys. Additionally, new and yet unknown channels will develop, and at increasingly rapid pace. Consider that until about 20 years ago, no digital channels existed at all. Accelerating technology development will continue this trend and also enable more personalized, coordinated, and targeted marketing in a manner which is more accessible and usable by companies of all sizes, budgets and capabilities.

I’m not going to try to pinpoint detailed specifics – I’m not claiming to be a psychic and it would be a waste of your time to read simple conjecture – but there are things that we can be fairly certain of given current trends, a bit of logic, and a hint of foresight. Marketing isn’t going anywhere, and while in the future it may not look quite like it does today, it will still be something that Philip Kotler would distinctly recognize.

"Marketing is a race, but unlike the 200 meter sprint there aren’t any referees that will call you for a false start. Get a jump on your competition, charge forward on the path to market domination, and start leveraging the next generation of marketing strategies today. Work with BioBM."

Avoiding Skepticism

Carlton Hoyt 7:35 pm , February 19, 2015

The scientific buying journey is fraught with skepticism. From the buyer’s perspective, this is a requirement of a good buying journey. The buyer must decide what to believe and what not to believe, determine what is meaningful and what is not, and refine their understanding of their own needs all while being blasted with marketing messages from companies that are all trying to get the scientist’s business. Skepticism is a natural and required component of these efforts. It is also the enemy of the marketer.

Skepticism is what makes overly pushy and overtly bombastic messages fail. It’s also part of the fuel for the rise in content marketing. Marketers are looking for ways to convey their messages in manners that create less skepticism. Rather than immediately jumping to validation, promotion, and flat-out selling, they first attempt to educate in a more subtly guiding manner which conditions the scientists to viewpoints that will be later elaborated on in the more traditional marketing efforts. However, promoting content to scientists is not the same as the scientists discovering content on their own, and the manner in which content is presented will, in part, determine their receptiveness to it. Additionally, taking a “hands off” approach throughout the buying journey such as to avoid skepticism would lead to overall marketing ineffectiveness due to low rates of opportunity development later in the journey.

Educational content is often necessary, but never sufficient. We therefore must consider the nature of messages, as well as how those messages are to be delivered, such that we can avoid skepticism-driven rejection earlier in the buying journey while still creating the desired effect in the later stages of the buying journey: a closed sale.

Evolving Message Types

Early in the journey, the customer is gathering information and may not even yet realize that they have a need for a product. At this stage, educational content is the way to go. You want to help them learn and discover information that will prime them to your point of view without giving them reason to be skeptical (as promoting a commercial solution would).

As they transition from discovery and exploration to analysis, they know a need exists and start to actively gather and evaluate options. Educational content is still useful, so long as it is focused on the customers’ needs. Basic background information is of little interest to the customer at this point, unless it is something so disruptive to their journey that they need to reconsider its premises. Additionally, we want to start adding validation content – content that demonstrates to them that the solution we are advocating is correct. (For example, case studies are a very common form of validation content.) This type of content will help them understand our offering as a qualified option to solve their need. If the customer has been properly educated to accept our point of view earlier in the buying journey, validation content will not raise skepticism.

As they come to the late stages of analysis and approach their buying decision, educational content should be largely avoided in favor of additional validation as well as promotions – the “hard sell,” as we call it. At this point the opportunity exists; we just need to seize it! Dancing around it with more educational content will not effectively prompt action. More direct calls to action are required.

Message Centricity

Let me lead off with this reminder: life science marketers should always maintain a focus on their scientist-customers. That said, customer-centricity exists on a sliding scale, as most things do, and is not absolute. Changing the centricity of your messages throughout the buying journey is also necessary for optimal performance.

Early in the journey, we should have a nearly exclusive customer focus. Everything should be framed from the perspective of the customer and their needs. We should adopt their perspective as much as possible. As the journey continues, we can shed a little bit of this customer-centricity, giving room to focus more first on the technology, then ultimately on the product. We are not shifting to a product-focus. We are shifting to a customer-centric product focus. We can never focus solely on the product. Why? The product is a lower-order need and our scientist-customers will respond vastly better to higher-order needs (the reason they need your solution in the first place).

Mechanism of Discovery

The manner in which messages are delivered can raise skepticism. However, the mechanisms that raise the least skepticism are not the most effective throughout the buying journey, so shifting mechanisms of message delivery / discovery must be considered as well.

Messages that are naturally found by your audience tend to raise far less skepticism than messages that are pushed upon them. Early in the buying journey, we want to rely on mechanisms that are organic – those which allow the messages or content to be found naturally by your audience or in a manner that feels natural. They should be able to actively choose to interact with it rather than have it pushed upon them. This could include organic search, display or native advertising, and placement within third party media. In general, marketing tactics that are considered inbound would roughly overlap with organic discovery. Regardless, the customer must feel as if they are driving their own discovery.

As the customer has more interaction with your brand and consents to receive marketing, you can begin to transition from pull to push. Even with permission, you should avoid the temptation to get too pushy too quickly, as you can still very easily raise skepticism by doing so. As the customer progresses through the buying journey, you can transition more from customer-driven discovery to a more visibly active role in leading them. This more active role will be necessary; if you were to always wait for the customer to “organically” discover and interact with your content, you could very well lose mindshare to your competitors. Therefore, a careful and evolving balance is required throughout the buying journey.

Transitioning Goals

While the ultimate goal of closing a sale remains the same throughout the buying journey, looking at the interim goals can help to understand both why the aforementioned transitions are necessary and how to execute them. In brief, we transition from:

Shifting the scientists’ viewpoint without activating skepticism …
… to convincing them that the adopted viewpoint is the correct one …
… to persuading them to act on their beliefs and execute a transaction.

We shift from seeking to primarily avoid rejection as the customer remains open to many viewpoints, to seeking acceptance as the customer evaluates and filters their options towards an ultimate decision.

Avoiding skepticism is undeniably important, and raising skepticism with your marketing can shut your brand out of a customers’ buying journey early on. However, the approaches that we use to avoid skepticism do not make for an efficient marketing platform as the buying journey progresses. Many of the mechanisms that create skepticism are needed to close opportunities. By understanding where customers’ are in their buying journeys, and matching our approaches to it to create balance, we simultaneously limit skepticism while increasing the ultimate likelihood of a sale.

"Scientists are complicated. Buying journeys are complicated. Your path to winning them can be easy. BioBM will ensure that your customers’ buying journeys – no matter where they start – end squarely on you. Let’s take your marketing to the next level and dominate the competition. Get started."

Blog / Demand Generation / Marketing Communications / Marketing Strategy 7:35 pm , February 19, 2015

Best Practices Aren’t Enough

Carlton Hoyt 1:22 pm , September 11, 2014

Many marketers look to market leaders for examples on what to do. The thinking is: if I can replicate what the largest and most successful incumbents in my market are doing, I’ll be just as successful as they are. While there are times when best practices are useful, there are many times when they are not enough. More often than not, a copycat marketing strategy will not replicate competitors’ success.

There are a number of times when marketing best practices are insufficient. These include (but are certainly not limited to):

When incumbents have a brand advantage that biases customers in favor of your incumbent. All else being equal, if your competitors have a brand advantage they will continue to outcompete you.
When there are a large number of incumbents and no one or two competitors that dominate. You certainly can’t dominate your market by following in the footsteps of other companies who don’t dominate either.
If the product or service you are selling is not sufficiently differentiated from competition. All else being equal, scientists will prefer to stick with what they know.
When the marketing practices of your competitors are misinformed or – for whatever reason – just not that good.

In these instances, you need to go beyond best practices. You have to choose which elements of your marketing program are of the greatest strategic importance and surpass competitors in order to gain advantage and capture market share. But how do you know what to focus on?

The answer should be rooted in two things: customer value, and differentiation. Differentiation is somewhat obvious – we can’t create advantage by doing the same thing as our competitors, so those things cannot be the focus unless you know you can do them substantially better and there would be some barrier to your competitors replicating your success. Unlocking customer value is often far more obscure of a goal. To do so, adopt a customer-centric viewpoint and consider what needs they have that lie beyond the realm of commercial products and services. Uncover needs that are related to your business and your offerings and align with your values, then create branded solutions which address them. (For more information on that topic, see this post.) Once you understand how you can create value for customers that goes beyond products, the possible natures of the delivery of that value will become relatively obvious. (More on value that isn’t intrinsically linked to your products here and here.)

Unless you have a vastly superior product or brand value, best practices can get you no further than your top competitors. To surpass them, become a market leader, and truly dominate your markets, you need to do things differently.

"Best practices only get you as far as your competition, and that’s neither our goal nor the goals of our clients. At BioBM, we strive to create leaders. We strive to transform markets. We strive to dominate competition. … What do you strive to do? Let’s make it happen."

Blog / Marketing Strategy 1:22 pm , September 11, 2014

Research Sans Assumptions

Carlton Hoyt 3:18 pm , September 4, 2014

Reports & Papers from BioBM - life science marketing and distribution reports In most market research, you start with a hypothesis or a set of assumptions and you take it from there. Those assumptions often aren’t conscious – for instance, when asking a user to rank a set of product attributes you’re assuming you know which attributes are most important – but they’re almost always present. For most research that’s fine, however for problems that are large and unknown these assumptions hinder our ability to identify a solution. This is true not just for traditional market research efforts, but for analytics-driven research as well. Diving into data – big or small – to try to answer a question doesn’t guarantee a correct result.

For those big, vexing problems, we need another approach.

Customer Research Without Assumptions

Serendipitous discoveries require that we shake those assumptions. We need to be able to observe and learn without our questions or research getting in the way of themselves. In order to do this, we need to adopt a customer-centric perspective. We once again need to stop thinking about the customers and start thinking like the customer.

Obviously, in order to perform research you still need to know what it is that you’re seeking to understand. We therefore still need to be able to ask questions and set goals, but we need to ensure those goals are assumption-free. To do so, start with the problem you want to solve or question you want to ask, and then convert that into a broad but addressable customer-centric issue. In other words, you need to be able to frame it as a human experience.

Addressing problems framed in this manner is not something that can be done with surveys or some kind of defined Q&A process – both require questions which embody assumptions. Instead, such research must be primarily observational. You want to be able to gather information in an open-ended manner. Questions should only be asked in response to observation. The primary issue in the design of such studies must be: what about our customers can we observe in order to gain the necessary understanding?

When to Take an Assumption-less Approach

The assumption-less approach to market research should only be undertaken for big, unknown problems. If you are even moderately familiar with the customers and the market, can envision a defined set of possible outcomes with a good degree of certainty, and can frame a set of hypotheses, then the problem is capable of being defined in a manner which does not necessitate an observational, assumption-less study.

The assumption-less approach is best when:

You are highly unfamiliar with the customers, market, or problem.
The problem at hand is novel.
Other methods of research or analytics cannot be used or have failed.
You cannot define a set of likely outcomes and have no hypothesis to test.

Aided by technology, many life science marketers who perform market research are increasingly relying on a combination of surveys and analytics to perform market research. These methods, however, cannot answer all questions. Hypothesis-driven market research imparts assumptions which can confound the understanding of unknown problems. To best tackle those big problems, take an assumption-less approach and perform an observational study which seeks to better understand unadulterated customer experiences.

"Have tough questions about your market that you’re struggling to answer? BioBM’s bespoke market research studies get to the heart of the problem and deliver understanding that enables transcendence in business results for life science companies. Learn more about our market research services or contact us."

Blog / Market Research 3:18 pm , September 4, 2014

Shift From a Product Focus

Carlton Hoyt 4:13 pm , August 14, 2014

Most life science companies still have a product focus, and many can get away with it because our industry, along with many other B2B industries, is a bit behind the marketing curve. Many companies place a very high priority on operational efficiency and building better products. Those things are undeniably important, but in many circumstances they’re not sufficient for winning markets anymore. There are plenty of products which were incremental improvements, or even significant improvements, and were offered at equal or lower products than their mainstream competitors but still failed. While there are many ways to fail in marketing a product, one of the largest is marketing a product. (Yes, you read that correctly.)

If You’re Only Marketing Products, You’re Doing It Wrong

Lets think about scientists for a minute. What are their goals? Maybe they’re trying to discover the next big drug. Maybe they’re trying to understand some burning scientific question. Whatever their goals are we can be reasonably certain that they are not to purchase “X” type of product. The need for a product is a low-order need. The experiment that the product will be used in is even a subordinate need to the ultimate goal. The point is that your product is relatively far from the thing that the scientist really cares about. Yet life science companies are trying to create competitive advantage in a manner which is almost entirely product-centric. That doesn’t make any sense.

We’ve seen symptoms of this shift from product to customer for a while. Personalization, for instance, tries to provide value by making the customer’s decision easier. Content marketing, when done well, tries to arm customers with knowledge. Companies are, whether conscious of it or not, being pulled into a more customer-centric viewpoint. But being pulled behind your competitors doesn’t create sustainable competitive advantage.

For a long time, companies looking to innovate would ask themselves “What else can we make and sell?” The question that you need to shift yourself to asking is “How can we provide value to our customers?”

Making the Shift

The most central facet of a customer-centric shift, especially since we are still talking about marketing products, is framing the product according to the needs of the customer. By that, I don’t just mean focusing broadly on customer needs, but rather focusing on specific customer segments’ purchase criteria and your products’ position relative to them. You don’t need to have a better, faster, or smarter product than your competitors. You need to have a product which more closely aligns with the needs of a specific customer. A Tesla is not claiming to be better than a Cadillac. They are simply meant for different audiences, and each segment is loyal to their brand in part because the brand focuses on their particular needs and desires (even if these desires are situational and therefore subject to change).

Think about how you can leverage network effects to your advantage. Most people think about customer data in the light of providing personalized promotions, knowing what company-created content to send to whom, or understanding a users’ purchase history. Get past that. Think about what information your customers have to share with each other and how you can help spread that information. This can be as complex as community-building or as simple as curating customers’ questions. Whatever the implementation, this information creates advantage over those who cannot provide such value. Network effects build on themselves and can be difficult to replicate.

On a non-product level, don’t forget to consider the brand advantages which drive scientists to your products in the long-term. Creating superior experiences for your customers imparts brand advantage for your company that manifest in improved customer acquisition and loyalty.

Innovation doesn’t necessarily mean product innovation, and customers are no longer making purchasing decisions solely based on the features of the product. Product-based advantages are becoming ever more tenuous, and competing effectively and creating sustainable advantage requires shifting focus to the customers. Provide superior value to them based on an understanding of their needs, and you’ll win their business.

"Looking for more effective ways to earn the business of your target scientists? There are plenty of opportunities waiting to be seized. Contact BioBM and we’ll uncover those opportunities and help you execute strategies to capitalize on them, grow your market share, and create sustainable advantage for your life science company. Tell us your challenges."

Blog / Marketing Strategy 4:13 pm , August 14, 2014

Content is for Your Customers

Carlton Hoyt 9:59 am , July 24, 2014

Your content isn't for you - it's for your customers. One of the biggest pitfalls of content creation – and by far the biggest content mistake by amateur life science marketers – is forgetting that your content isn’t just directed AT your target audience, but is FOR your target audience. Many content creators focus too heavily on what they want their customers to hear rather than sincerely addressing customers’ needs through content and, in doing so, providing customer value.

To illustrate the point, here are some types of content which I frequently see and which have the wrong focus:

Generic event-promoting blog posts (“We’ll be at the XYZ meeting in booth 2000!”)
“White papers” which don’t do anything but restate the value claims for a product or service.
Frequent social media posts about ongoing promotions.
Blog posts which are little more than product overviews.
Posting just about any overt promotional message to a LinkedIn group.

All of the above are company-centric or product-centric promotions. They do not properly address the customers’ needs. Even if a prospect has a potential but unrealized need for the product, these kinds of “content spam” will simply drive them away by trying to create an opportunity to purchase when most of your audience is likely not actively in a relevant buying journey. It’s the wrong message at the wrong time, and they’ll filter it out along with the mountains of other promotional content which they get bombarded with.

Instead of company-centric and product-centric messages, use your content channels to provide value-added, customer-centric content. Creating valuable customer-centric content, as well as matching each piece of content to the appropriate channels, requires three things:

Understanding what information your customers are looking for.
Understanding your customers’ preferences for consuming content.
Ensuring that your content distribution is properly targeted such that any given piece of content is provided to the most relevant audiences

To do these things effectively, you need to remove your own mindset from the equation. You need to stop thinking about your customers and start thinking like your customers. If you can effectively do that when you’re planning content, you’ll end up with content which is more valuable to your customers.

"Most life science companies are creating content, but in a world where more and more content is being generated, is your content valuable enough to rise above the clutter and get your audience’s attention? If you’re looking to improve the value of your content marketing efforts, turn to BioBM. Whether you need help defining content strategies or need someone to put words to paper, we can create high-quality content that earns you the respect – and the business – of your customers. Contact us today."

Blog / Content Marketing 9:59 am , July 24, 2014

Content First, SEO Second

Carlton Hoyt 12:03 pm , June 24, 2014

By now, any decent SEO-er knows that the old way of performing SEO – basically, manipulating ranks through inorganic backlinks – is worthless. Google caught on and killed it. As of Panda 4.0, there are extremely limited ways in which someone can fool the rankings system, and doing so will only hurt you in the long run. That being the case, more SEO experts are turning to content development to improve SEO. In a sense, this is good – content development is a legitimate way of trying to improve rankings. However, as SEO-ers start to think about content, we need to remember that the content itself needs to be prioritized above SEO at all times. In other words, life science marketers cannot let the quality of their content slip due to the desire to focus on SEO.

Remember that the purpose of using content for SEO is to have your content seen by your target audience. Your audience, when consuming that content, is going to judge you by its quality. If you’re churning out low-quality content for SEO purposes you may get a lot of eyeballs, but you’re going to be turning off your audience due to the low value of the content which they’re landing on. This can be especially damaging if the audience doesn’t have prior experience with your company. Instead of trying to develop content strictly for SEO, take the high-quality content that’s being developed as part of your content marketing strategy and optimize it!

There are a number of things that you can do to improve the SEO of your high-quality content. For example:

Think about how your audience would ask questions related to the topic at hand. Is there any particular phrasing that they would use? If so, try to incorporate that phrasing into your content to improve the match for relevant “long-tail” search terms.
Make appropriate use of heading tags.
Ensure your page titles and URLs are optimized and relevant. Some content management systems default to generic nomenclature for URLs and titles, using things like an arbitrary numbering system or the date instead of a rich description. Ensure your settings use the title of your content (or at least part of it) in the page title and URL.
Improve the clickthrough rate of digital content by using a descriptive meta description tag
Improve the CTR of your digital content even more by using Google Authorship and ensuring you have a good headshot in your linked Google+ account. This can have a huge impact – I’ve seen various case studies claiming that pages with authorship attribution and a headshot displayed in the search results see between 20% and 150% increases in clickthrough. Eye-tracking data is just as compelling: searchers will pay more attention to author-attributed pages than higher-ranking videos with larger images.

If necessity dictates that you need to create content strictly for SEO purposes, especially if it would fall outside the bounds of your content strategy, ask yourself the following questions to ensure that you don’t churn out junk content:

Does our target audience have a need to know about this topic?
Can we create content which would genuinely fill that knowledge gap?
Would our target audience expect us to provide this type of content? If not, would they find it odd that we are? … I think of this as the realtor / lawnmower conundrum. Your realtor, knowing that you just bought a house, would be in a great position to sell you a lawnmower. They even know what kind of lawn you have. However, you would likely be put off if your realtor tried to sell you a lawnmower.

While the tools at one’s disposal to positively affect search engine ranks are more limited than they used to be, SEO is still important. As SEO tactics take a more content-centric approach, it’s important you don’t churn out low-value content. Your content strategy should be focused on the content. Working SEO into your content strategy will have a far more positive long-term effect than trying to take to shape content around an SEO strategy.

"In their quest to determine who to give their business to, your customers are judging you every step of the way. Providing value to them through great content is a critical way to earn their trust and respect, giving your life science company an edge on the competition. If you are looking for superior content strategies which will create competitive advantage for your company, contact BioBM. We’ll ensure your company is providing value to your customers which pays you back in increased business. And we’ll make sure it gets seen while we’re at it."

Blog / Content Marketing / Search Marketing 12:03 pm , June 24, 2014

Customer-Centric Content

Carlton Hoyt 9:49 am , September 24, 2013

Content marketing must be undertaken from a customer-centric viewpoint Content marketing is no longer a novel tactic among life science tools and services companies. Truly effective content strategies, however, are still rare. Many life science marketers approach content marketing too superficially, with an “if I write it, they will come” mentality. There are two common problems in most content marketing campaigns that are epidemic to the life science tools industry, although both are usually rooted in lack of a meaningful content strategy.

The most common problem is publishing content that you want the viewers to see rather than content that they would be interested in. This problem most frequently manifests as an excessive amount of company-centric and / or product-centric content. This content is often overtly promotional and may consist largely of new product announcements, sales and other deals, highlights of publications using the company’s products / technologies, company news, events the company will be exhibiting at, and similar content. This content marketing tactic is lazy and self-serving, but most often fails to accomplish the desired effect of increasing demand for its products. Being overtly promotional, the content is not readily trusted and may actually create skepticism among the audience, causing them to disengage from the company’s content and potentially limit the effectiveness of the company’s other marketing efforts.

The other common problem is publishing content that you believe the viewers want to see but which is content that they do not want to get from you. This content is often generic and could be readily obtained elsewhere. It may be easy to take the most interesting and relevant content from Nature News, your favorite scientific journals, and other sources, but the content generally becomes diluted in rewriting / reposting and chances are the scientists already have better sources for such information. You’re probably not going to become the Nature News of your field – at least not without a herculean effort or unless your field is extremely niche.

This begs the question: what kind of content should be published? The content must be customer-centric. It must be content that holds unique value for the audience while adding value to your brand and / or products. To get yourself started in creating a content strategy that meets these criteria, ask yourself the following questions:

What content can we create that our audience cannot get elsewhere or could only get from a very limited number of sources?
What kind of content would the audience like to see specifically from us?
How can we use content to enhance the value of our products / services in a way that is educational and will be appreciated by the audience rather than fueling skepticism?
What knowledge do we have that is of value to the audience and can be used to demonstrate leadership in our field?

Remember that scientists are customers of your content – they are “paying” for your content “product” with their time and attention. Your content needs to be sufficiently engaging to be worth their attention, but it also needs to be relevant and valuable enough to reflect positively on your brand.

It’s also worth noting that many companies get into the habit of thinking: we need to make X number of posts per [unit time]. While these time-constrained content goals are good to have, they should serve as guidelines rather than rules. Having something valuable to say is more important than saying something according to a set minimum schedule. If you don’t have something valuable to share, don’t share anything at all. It’s better to consistently have high-value content which is published on an inconsistent basis than to have content of inconsistent value published consistently.

Content marketing is not something to take lightly. If you lack strategy or execution content marketing can be an easy way to waste a whole lot of time and effort. The rush for many life science companies to “start doing content marketing” should be tempered by the need for a coherent strategy in order to create the desired outcomes. Done correctly, content marketing can take your brand and position it as a leader in your field.

"Is your company consistently publishing high-value content? Is your content sufficiently customer-centric? If the answer to either of these questions is no, it’s time to call BioBM. Our life science content marketing experts will help you formulate a content strategy which will build significant value for your brand among your target audience. Contact us to get started."

Blog / Content Marketing 9:49 am , September 24, 2013

Speak with the Customers

Carlton Hoyt 9:13 am , June 21, 2013

Life science companies rarely speak with their customers as often or as deeply as they should. You can make the common excuse about scientists being distant and antisocial (which I would like to go on record as saying is complete nonsense) but many companies actually start out being good at speaking with customers but then lose that trait as they grow. Why? Simple – taking the time to speak with customers isn’t something that’s easily scalable. It’s easy to view large amount of customer interaction as unnecessary and cut it in the name of efficiency. Or a company might just become large enough that it makes a lot of financial sense to automate the heck out of everything. While marketing automation and customer relationship management automation are very powerful tools that we strongly advocate, they should not displace real conversations with your scientist-customers, for a number of reasons.

1) Customers love good support.

Nothing says “we don’t care about you” like a robotic confirmation email sent from a DO-NOT-REPLY email address. While you can still do better without actually speaking with the customers, your customers will appreciate getting an email from a real person (or at least what looks to be an email from a real person) with the ability to reply to that person and ultimately get a response. It shows that you care enough to give them some of your time, if they want it. And while some customers may abuse the privilege, most will not and it gives you the opportunity to create a lot of goodwill. It’s great for your brand and great for customer-retention.

Of course, you don’t need to wait until after the sale to have a conversation or to demonstrate great support (but we’ll address that in a minute).

2) You WILL learn things.

Want feedback on your product? Want MORE and BETTER feedback? Want to learn what the customer is thinking when they’re contemplating a purchase or perusing your website? You could fire off an email asking them to take a survey to try to win an iPod, and that might be useful if you’re dying for quantitative data to perform some large-scale analysis, but in most situations you’ll be better served and you’ll almost always get a better response from just striking up a conversation. Have an actual person type an email to a few people who bought your product three months ago and ask how things are going. I’m sure most of you would be genuinely interested in how the customer feels about your product, so let that interest shine through. Show them that you have an interest in them and you care about what they think and how things are working out.

Of course, you don’t need to wait until after the sale to have a conversation and learn about your audience (almost there…)

3) It can be great for conversion.

You know those live chat boxes that you occasionally see popping up asking if you want to chat with a representative? Or the popup-like “lightbox” that appears after you’ve been on a website for 10 seconds where you’re asked if you’ll take a 4-minute survey? Those both seem pretty silly and useless and they often are, however their failure is more due to design than their intention. Customers will speak with you during their buying journey, and you can effectively prompt them to do so on your website (or just about anywhere else). Whether you’re making use of live chat or simply encouraging users to call or email, try to start a conversation as early as possible without being forceful or gimmicky about it. Not only will you help your conversion by answering questions and helping to simplify the customer’s buying journey, but you’ll also learn a lot about how they make their buying decisions and demonstrate good support all at the same time.

It’s very easy to get out of the habit of having meaningful conversations with customers. By ensuring that you take the time to speak with the customers you’ll be doing a valuable service to your company and helping your scientist-customers at the same time. There’s simply no substitute for real conversations.

"Looking to spark more conversations with your customers without overloading your staff? Not a problem! Talk to BioBM. We’ll create strategies for improving customer relationships as well as collecting and utilizing more feedback and information then help deploy and integrate the technology solutions to help you efficiently manage customer relationships and communications. Contact BioBM to learn more."

Blog / Market Research 9:13 am , June 21, 2013

Customer-Centric Websites

Carlton Hoyt 8:54 am , April 5, 2013

Many life science companies have problems converting website traffic to qualified leads. There are two common causes for this; either the quality of your traffic is poor (in other words, you’re attracting an audience that is either irrelevant or has no need and no intent to make a purchase) or your marketing is poor. With regards to the issue of poor website-based marketing, an extremely common cause is that the life science company’s website is company-centric or product/service-centric. The overall gist of the message on these website is: “This is who we are,” or “This is what we sell.” Unless a customer is ready to make a purchasing decision then and there (few are, in general) then these styles of messages will most often fail to resonate with the potential customer and simply fall short, failing to get the customer to engage further with your company and marketing as they progress through their buying journey.

To illustrate my point, let’s look at a generic website design. Most website designs are something like this:

The logo is on the upper left and the nav bar consists of an “about” selection, “products” and / or “services”, perhaps something akin to “industries”, and “contact”. The homepage content consists of an overview of the company and / or its major products and services.

Before we get into what should be on your website, it is worth explaining why your website content doesn’t need to simply be a summary of what you do. Your website is not a brochure or flier that you may distribute to people who have no prior knowledge of your company and lack sufficient context to figure it out what it does. In order for someone to get to your website they must do one of a handful of things, and in all situations you can assume that they either have an idea of what you do or have sufficient context that you don’t need to introduce yourself as you would to a stranger. They either 1) heard about it somewhere and went to it directly, 2) searched for a term in a search engine and clicked it, 3) clicked on an ad, or 4) clicked on a link on another website. All of these things either provide context or require that the person has a degree of knowledge beforehand. Therefore, the “brochure” style homepage isn’t necessary.

Instead, life science websites should be designed to be customer-centric. Instead of putting the company and the products first, you should adopt the customer’s perspective and show them that you understand their problems and needs. By focusing on the product or service, you’re effectively beginning the engagement with what the product is before they have a reason to care. By focusing on their needs you’re relating with them and getting their attention, setting yourself up to show how your products fulfill those needs.

But how can marketers create life science websites that are more customer-centric? A good place to start is with user stories. User stories help you escape the mind-frame of thinking about the customer and begin to think like the customer. In user stories, the marketer attempts to understand the motivations behind the customers actions and desires in order to fill the gap between the need and the solution. A typical user story is structured like this:

User Story Format

As a [role] who is [situation], I want [need / desire] such that [benefit].

The use of user stories certainly do not guarantee that marketers adopt the customer’s perspective, so care should be taken to ensure that the situation is not defined simply to provide the intended benefit of the product. The situation should, however, be defined to create the need that your product is looking to solve. Starting with your target markets, consider all of the situations that could arise which would create the need that you are looking to solve. Then try to view the problem through the customer’s eyes and see what their desires are. If you find that your are simply defining the desire as your product or service, then you are not adopting the customers viewpoint.

Let’s illustrate this with some examples. The following would be a good user story:

User Story Good Example

As a biologist who is working with small model systems and imaging many 3-dimensional, fluorescently labelled samples, I want a faster, hands-off method of imaging my slides such that I can image more slides in less time and with less effort.

The next user story tells the same story, but is poor because it fails to elaborate the customer motivation and ends up framing the need in a product-centric manner:

User Story Bad Example

As a microscopist who has too many samples to image, I want an automated system for slide handling and imaging such that I can process slides more quickly.

User stories can be created for a number of situations and customer types. Once the user stories are written and compiled, you will have a much better understanding of what the customer is looking for from their own vantage point. You can then use this information to target content to groups of similar customers, create or optimize your website’s user flow and navigation, and improve the value propositions you present to the prospects.

"Is your website not generating as many high-quality leads as you would like? Would you like your messages to resonate better with your customers? BioBM can help. Our website development services are holistic and consider what you need to engage your target markets. If you would like a website that acts as a lead generation engine instead of a fancy business card, contact us and we’ll set you on the path to making your website the powerful tool it’s meant to be."

Blog / Customer Experience / Digital Marketing 8:54 am , April 5, 2013

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